Jack Ass, or the Malcontent's Mournful Bray

Among my daily blog reads is Hot Air, a conservative group blog/news site owned by Michelle Malkin and operated by bloggers Ed Morrissey and Allahpundit. Today, Hot Air linked to an article by a heretofore unknown (to me) individual named John Batchelor. Just seeing that the article was posted at The Daily Beast was cringeworthy enough - The Daily Beast being the website where Bill and Priscilla Buckley's son Christopher came out in favor of Barack Obama last fall and where more recently, brain-dead Valley Girl and political heiress Meghan McCain has taken to relating the joys of being a "Progressive Republican," whatever that is.

In short, I knew Batchelor's article was going to be bone-bendingly ridiculous, and I was not disappointed. In his disjointed screed, Batchelor begins by lamenting the destruction of Herbert Hoover at the hands of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932. Not sure what that's supposed to prove about the Republican Party of 2009, Johnny, but thanks for the info.

The heart of Batchelor's complaint, though, is related as such:

The Democrats win just because the Republicans have disqualified themselves as leaders with their greed, cruelty, and surprising clumsiness. From Herbert Hoover to Robert Taft, from the Bush clan to the ridiculous Tom DeLay, not one note of grace, not a convincing moment of understanding that the Republican Party is about honest liberty for honest, laboring people—not about Wall Street, the tax code, chasing Reds, or bullying the lonely.

Oh, if those darn Republican rascals could just be more like the Democrats, all would be well!

Well let's consider Batchelor's boogeymen. Wall Street? What is so bad about Wall Street? As a matter of fact, I'm rather surprised that Batchelor didn't include the great Calvin Coolidge on his hit list, but then it's clear that when it comes to history and politics, Batchelor is far out of his depth. But back on topic, here is what Coolidge had to say about the business world (Wall Street included) and its relevance to ordinary Americans:

There does not seem to be cause for alarm in the dual relationship of the press to the public, whereby it is on one side a purveyor of information and opinion and on the other side a purely business enterprise. Rather, it is probable that a press which maintains an intimate touch with the business currents of the nation is likely to be more reliable than it would be if it were a stranger to these influences. After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with buying, selling, investing, and prospering in the world.

In that same speech, Coolidge added:

We make no concealment of the fact that we want wealth, but there are many other things that we want very much more. We want peace and honor, and that charity which is so strong an element of all civilization. The chief ideal of the American people is idealism. I cannot repeat too often that America is a nation of idealists.

Good points all from Silent Cal.

What of Batchelor's complaint of the tax code? Would he be happier had Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush not pushed through their tax cuts? And "chasing Reds"? Is Batchelor saying that Richard Nixon and Ronald Regan were wrong to have pursued policies that eventually brought about the Soviet Union's demise? Millions of Eastern Europeans who now enjoy freedom and democracy would disagree. As would a generation of Americans who have grown up free of the fear of nuclear annihilation.

Finally, what of his assertion that the Republican Party enjoys "bullying the lonely"? That simply makes no sense.

Throughout his article, Batchelor sees fit to bash "the South" at every opportunity. I put "the South" in quotes because the region of which Batchelor writes is one that is entirely of his own imagining. To him, Dixieland is a place populated by

prankish Confederate re-enactors—chubby men in gray and butternut suits with gold buttons and feather-tipped hats, clanking down stairs with shiny sabers. A handful of them are just boors from the South who look poorly on horseback and wave unread Bibles while calling for Billy Sunday to rise like the gold market.

Well, praise the Lord and pass the krugerrands!

Batchelor's constant lambasting of the South brought to mind a line from an old Steppenwolf song: "We don't know how to mind our own business, the whole world's got to be just like us." While the writer of that line meant Americans as a whole, in truth it really only applies to some who hail from parts of the United States that many here in Texas would refer to as "Yankee-land" - namely the Middle Atlantic and New England states.

Now just so you know, I'm well aware that not all people from that part of the country harbor attitudes similar to Batchelor's. In fact, in my life I have known and continue to know many fine people from that part of the country - people who I respect and trust implicitly. But I long ago lost count of the number of times I've hard a New Yorker or a Bostonian complain of how San Antonio just doesn't measure up to the standards of their former hometown - and how we should try to become more like them.

Really? I've done a fair amount of traveling myself - within the borders of this country and abroad - and never have I thought when walking down the Gran Via in Madrid nor Stearns Wharf in Santa Barbara that either place just had to be more like San Antonio. Much less have I even thought of saying such to any of the natives.

But being an unedumacated, Tom DeLay supportin' hillbilly on my way to a revival meetin' down here in the former Confederacy, what do I know?